| dc.description.abstract | The emergence of new technologies such as internet of things, wireless communication,
affordable microcontrollers, and sensors facilitates the optimization of water use. This
advancement in technology is an opportunity for the west African countries and the rest of
the African continent to move from rainfall dependent farming to an autonomous and
irrigated farming system. The transfer to irrigation systems may lead the continent to new
issues such as competition between food, energy and water production and unsustainable
resource usage. An innovative approach to solve this problem is the implementation of
Agrophotovoltaic (APV) system. To ensure water and energy usage efficiency of an APV
system, a smart irrigation system needs to be set up. This study will focus on the design of
an integrated irrigation management system that will allow minimum interaction of farmers
on fields and ensure appropriate and real-time crop water need monitoring and water
allocation for optimal crop production. Different data was first collected to establish a proper
irrigation scheduling using the FAO CROPWAT 8.0 software. The established irrigation
scheduling allows the evaluation of the designed real-time crop water monitoring system.
With the hardware consisting of two sensors, communication devices, a pump, a power unit
on one hand, and a web-based software (Vegecloud) on the other hand, the remote access
and control of crop water requirement through the visualization of data gathered by sensors
was achieved. The developed system was able to ensure real-time crop water need
monitoring by allowing an instant data collection, transferring, processing and analysis
based on the data representation illustrated on Vegecloud. | en_US |
